D-Link DWL-G510 Wireless PCI Adapter, 802.11g, 54 Mbps
by D-Link
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Our Price: $56.74 Availability: Usually ships in 2-3 business days Buy Used: from $4.95 (click here) Category: CE See more product details |
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Customers in the UK,
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Digital Cameras Photo Reviews of D-Link DWL-G510 Wireless PCI Adapter, 802.11g, 54 Mbps
Customer Review: Works with OpenSuse Linux 10.3 64 Bit
Summary: 5 Stars
I was pretty shocked at how difficult it was to get wireless up and running with linux. Worse, if you decide to go with a quad core processor (which I did), things are even more difficult. Linux is not the culprit here; manufacturers don't write drivers for linux. What's worse, they refuse (for the most part) to release their hardware information. If they did at least the latter, the community would write a driver in no time for that card.
I have a quad core intel processor, 500 GB sata drive on an intel motherboard. I don't know if the card would work with ndiswrapper, but I got it to work with madwifi. madwifi supports the atheros chipset (in both 32 and 64 bit environments) and this card uses the atheros chipset. I *believe* in one version, it uses the marvell chipset. The only card that uses the marvell chipset (that I'm aware of) that linux supports is the d-link one. STAY AWAY FROM MARVELL CHIPSETS FOR LINUX!
Download madwifi and install it. I didn't use a .ymp download and just compiled it myself. Once installed, run the following (as root or with sudo):
sudo /sbin/modprobe ath_pci
sudo /sbin/ifconfig ath0 up
sudo /usr/sbin/iwconfig ath0 essid "(your sid value here)"
sudo /sbin/dhclient ath0
The line before the last you probably don't even need as it auto connects to the strongest signal. The last line allows you to get an ip address via dhcp. Check out the newbie howto section of madwifi for the details on getting this far.
So you're connected and everything's all good. However, the next time you boot up, you'll have to do this again. So open up Yast and go to Network Devices then Network Card. You should see the wireless card there. Configure it and make sure you pick the option to have everything started up on boot.
One last note. If you run lspci to check the chipset, it doesn't show up with the word "wireless" in there anywhere. For me (I have rev 1), it showed up as
Ethernet controller: Atheros Communications, Inc. AR2413 802.11bg NIC (rev 01)
The first time I stuck in my computer, I didn't notice this line and thought my computer wasn't picking it up. I thought I might have a bum card, so stuck it in one of my windows machines and it worked fine. I stuck it back in my linux box and looked carefully and saw the line.
I haven't had any disconnects and I'm connected to a router one floor and diagonally below me. The speed seems to be what you would expect from broadband, although I haven't benchmarked it. This is my first d-link product and I couldn't be happier.
Customer Review: The absolute worst experience!
Summary: 1 Stars
This card is ended up being more trouble than it's worth. After receiving the card, I immediately installed it. After 10 minutes, my computer stopped communicating with the network... not just the Internet, I couldn't even ping computers on the LAN. Even though the status shows "connected" with "very good" signal, the card will not communicate. The only way to get communication back was to reboot. The problem is that this card never stayed "online" and tech support was absolutely no help. By the way, this is a known issue.. just do an Internet search for: "DWL-G510 Connection problems" and you will find very frustrated people trying to get this thing to work. Most just gave up, and go with other brands. All I can say is, it's not worth it, when there are so many other cards out there that are truly "plug and play". I ended up getting rid of mine as well.
By the way, D-Link is aware of this issue, but has not been able to correct the problem. I cannot believe that it has been allowed to go on as long as it has. I implore all buyers to beware!!
--Update--
I did end up getting rid of this card. As you will see if you do a search on this particular card model, it's hit or miss. For some people, it works just fine. For many others it causes headaches and unnecessary time-spent troubleshooting. If you do get this card and find issues, my recommendation is to not bother. On the upside, I did find a card that has done everything that I need. The card is similar in that it is a PCI card. The manufacturer is "trendnet" Take a look, they offer a similar wireless-g card that is less expensive. I purchased two and each card only took a few minutes to install. To date, I've had great success with the trendnet product. Very happy with it!
Customer Review: Awestruck by powerful suck that is the D-Link DWL-G510
Summary: 1 Stars
I just got my new Alienware computer in from FedEx today, and boy am I excited. I ordered it without a wireless adapter since I already had my trusty D-Link that worked in my old computer. I got everything set up and I was surfing the internet within minutes...and for minutes only, it seems. I can't stay connected for more than about 5-10 minutes with this DWL-G510. Once it disconnects, trying to disable and re-enable the connection makes the entire computer slow and unresponsive. Only a reboot will allow me to get connected again, albeit for only another 5-10 minutes. All the other computers on this little home network of mine can stay connected seemingly indefinitely, so the problem isn't with the network. And while the card did work in another computer, I have a hard time believing that it's Alienware, maker of all that is computerly awesome, haver of a fantastic reputation, who is screwing up here.
Bottom line: Do not buy this wireless adapter, now matter how alluring the price. Do a google search on it and you'll see that it isn't just a few kooks at amazon.com saying that this wireless adapter is crap; people everywhere are saying it. Buy a Linksys instead.
P.S. The ASUS driver mentioned by other reviewers is working better for me. I have been disconnected once so far (I've been using it for 20-30 minutes), but it was easy to get reconnected, i.e. it did not necessitate a reboot as the D-Link driver did. Hey D-Link! Another company is making better drivers for your product than you are, and they aren't even trying! Try to muster up some dignity and fix that, would you?
Customer Review: System has trouble recognizing that card exists
Summary: 2 Stars
I installed this card first in an AMD K6-III/500 machine running Win Me, but the driver indicated that the card was not found. (Yes, I *did* install the drivers *before* installing the card, per the instructions.) I even tried changing PCI slots, but no dice.
Then, I installed it a Pentium II 333 system running Win 98SE. Same problem.
Finally, I installed it in an AMD Athlon XP 2400+ system running Win Me, and it recognized the card and installed itself correctly. It seems to work OK, but I can't get it to recognize the network and connect automatically when Win Me starts; instead, I have to manually click on the driver icon in the system tray, then double-click on my "profile" to get it to connect!
Anyone who has cable Internet service knows that you can expect to lose your connection once in a while, but with other hardware (like Linksys), it just reconnects automatically in a second or two. Not with this card. I have to go through the whole process of clicking on the systray icon, etc. to reconnect.
I've just downloaded the Asus drivers, as another poster had mentioned, and will try those tonight after work. I hope updated drivers fix the problems! The card seems to work fine once it's actually installed and connected. It's got to be a driver issue. It appears to me that D-Link is still listing only the version 1.00 (initial release) drivers on their Web site, unless I'm missing something!
Customer Review: Drops connection all the time
Summary: 1 Stars
This card drops connection every eight hours when using WEP. The connection also disappears sometimes even though the status shows OK. The connection can be re-established by opening the Windows wireless connection manager and re-typing the WEP password. Sometimes that doesn't work and the computer needs to be rebooted.
Also, although the box says it supports WPA, it does not come w/ the DLink utility. Rather you have to use the Windows XP configuration tool. The speed varies randomly (1mbps~36mbps) and the connection gets dropped (more) often. This can only be fixed by rebooting. Downloading the ASUS driver did not help.
Speaking of the DLink utility, it doesn't connect automatically when turning on the computer. You have to open the window and double-click the connection. I didn't find an option for automatic connections.
I think all those connection problems are probably caused by the driver trying to do an encryption key rotation. It's just a case of poor programming... Rather then trying to deal w/ the software problem, save yourself the trouble, spend a little more money and buy something else.